


Threshold

by divingforstones



Category: Lewis (TV)
Genre: Community: lewis_challenge, Disorders of Consciousness, Disputes, First Kiss, Hospitalisation, Hurt/Comfort, M/M, Major Illness, Philosophical Discourses, Promises, References to Episode: S02e03 Life Born of Fire, References to Episode: S06e04 The Indelible Stain, Streams of Consciousness, Threats, and pleas
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-10-31
Updated: 2014-11-01
Packaged: 2018-02-23 10:00:42
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 2
Words: 10,348
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/2543474
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/divingforstones/pseuds/divingforstones
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>
  <i>“I know you can hear me. I’ve still got you. And I’m still not going anywhere.”</i>
</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> This is set back in the Sergeant Hathaway days, a while after Season 6. So non-canon compliant.
> 
> Contains references to awareness during surgery/under anaesthesia 
> 
> Many thanks to wendymr for her beta'ing of this which was, as always, so enlightening, encouraging and helpful.

The second time that Robbie wakes, it’s only the sound of their voices that keeps him anywhere approaching calm. Not that he can do anything to express his panic. He can’t move. Not his limbs, not so much as a finger, not his mouth to make a sound. Even his eyes won’t open. Just like the first time that he’d come to like this, some indeterminate amount of time ago. It was all he could focus on then. Trying and failing, with increasingly disorganised, panic-inducing efforts, to make his body respond to his wishes. Until that welcome state of oblivion had mercifully reclaimed him.

But this time there’s the overwhelming relief of their voices.

Two utterly familiar voices that Robbie knows he could pick out unerringly from any others in a voice identification parade.

He concentrates his will on listening to them, as a means to battle down the mounting surge of fear at finding himself still like this. He can listen.

“You mean like Claire Gansa? Alex Gansa’s wife?” James’s voice is very carefully controlled.

What?

“ _No_ , James. No.” Laura is adamant. “Get that idea out of your head for starters. There’s no brain injury. This—it’s called delayed emergence. And before you start googling that—No one knows why he won’t wake up just yet. Most of the usual causes have been ruled out. But his scans are fine—okay? Nothing neurologically catastrophic has happened.”

“Then—”

“He might be having more trouble than usual metabolising the sedative or anaesthetic meds. Getting them out of his system.”

“But he should have managed that by now?”

There’s a pause, fraught with something that Robbie can’t discern, before Laura acknowledges it. “Yes. He should have.”

It’s hard being able to hear them. Laura, finding it so difficult to deliver the truth of the matter to James—whatever that is, she doesn’t seem rightly to know what’s going on with Robbie either—and James so deceptively controlled.

“Did they give him the wrong dose of anaesthetic? Too much?”

It can’t have been too much. Robbie had thought it must have been too little. He doesn’t understand how he can go from being awake when it shouldn’t have been possible, that first time, to being unable to make himself rouse that last crucial part now when they’re expecting him to.

But he’s starting to take in and piece together what he can of his surroundings. He’s not lying flat any more like in the operating theatre. He’s propped up, almost sitting, and their voices aren’t echoing the way that those other voices, those strangers’ voices were.

He must be back in a hospital room, if James is allowed in here.

There are still all sorts attached to him, but at least no-one is doing anything further to him at the moment. And there’s a light source above him. This one isn’t glaring like that earlier one was, but glowing steadily through the filter of Robbie’s closed lids. It’s dimmer at the sides of his vision, so that quieter light must be right overhead.

There are soft regular beeps with an underlying rhythm of steadying clicks.

And there’s James and there’s Laura, both battling beside Robbie to understand what’s happening too.

Laura sounds rather helpless. All those long years of friendship with her and that’s a tone that Robbie doesn’t hear from her often. “No, they don’t think it’s a drug error. Nothing like that. I don’t think anyone is to blame for this. He just hasn’t—there’s something odd. The human brain and disorders of consciousness—they’re still a mystery in many ways to doctors."

“Well, that’s _massively_ reassuring.”

“James—”

“I don’t understand.” And chair legs protest hard against an unyielding floor as James must rise abruptly to his feet. He’s getting dead frustrated. At his inability to get his head around this, and work out the answer, amongst everything else.

_Take it easy, lad, I’m still here._

Laura’s trying her best to calm him. “He’s in good hands, really he is. ICU is the best place he can be in. And he’ll be extremely closely monitored by the neuro team, there’s nothing to suggest that things will deteriorate any further. He’s just not emerging from this state like he should be. Yet. And they don’t know why. Yet.” There’s a distinct note of frustration creeping into her voice too as she tries to emphasize the more hopeful word at the close of that.

“Then what do we do?” demands James’s voice from somewhere above Robbie. Christ, he’s desperate.

“Nothing. There’s nothing anyone _can_ do. Except—talk to him. Be with him and keep talking. He could be in a fluctuating state of consciousness where he can hear, at least some of the time, but just be unable to respond. They haven’t got many avenues open to them but to keep running tests. But it’ll give them something to go on. And they don’t want to miss any shifts in his state of consciousness.”

“What do you mean? That he could get worse? Neurologically, that he could get worse?”

“James, this was wholly unanticipated and highly unlikely. There’s no reason why he should get worse. We don’t even know what exactly _has_ happened. It’s very difficult to assess someone’s level of awareness when they can’t give a behavioural response.”

“He can’t show us if he’s aware—” He’s struggling badly with that idea. Robbie’s not doing much better with it. But he realises that he’s stopped his self-defeating, agitated efforts at trying to move in every way at once, as he’s drawn instead by the mounting distress that James is striving to keep at bay. Robbie’s starting to hone in on trying to make one or two specific movements instead. Because he can hear James pacing around the bed. It makes you want to turn your head to track him. Makes you want to reach out your hand and still him.

“They’ve been trying to alert his next of kin. Do you know why they can’t get hold of Lyn?”

“Oh,” James acknowledges. And the sound of his footsteps stops as he’s diverted a little, remembering. “Because she’s probably on a plane. They were headed off on their holiday today.”

Ah, no. Their holiday. She’d been looking forward to it that much.

“She’d never have gone if she’d thought that—this—it was meant to be a _day_ procedure. It was meant to be a routine surgery. I came to pick him up. I was going to give him a lift home, and stay overnight on his couch even though he’d be telling me it was all unnecessary and I’d pretend to ignore his grumbling at being kept under surveillance, as he’d have put it—he was meant to just wake up and _grumble._ "

“It was routine. Nothing untoward happened to explain this. The actual tonsillectomy went fine with no complications.”

“Oh, well, if his tonsils have been successfully removed, that’s all that matters. Wonderful. This is what you call fine? Routine?” And in the absence of any other target for his utter confusion, James is resorting to directing some of his pent-up fury at Laura. She knows it, too. There’s a long pause and then the sound of chair legs travelling back along the floor again.

“Get back over here.” Her tone isn’t unkind, but there’s an underlying note in it that Robbie knows full well, having had it directed on him on more than one occasion when Laura has a point to make. “Take this chair. You need to talk to him. Just pretend the two of you are having a pint. Or—” She seems to reconsider that. “Well—the two of you…Not so much of the mutual silent support this time. Or the peaceful communicating without words. _Talk_ to him.”

There’s silence from James.

Laura apparently chooses to ignore that. “I’m going to let them know about Lyn, to try her mobile again in a while. And Franco’s over in Germany this week, and he’ll have expected me be to be home by now. He’ll be trying our landline. I’m going to call him too. You just stay here with Robbie and keep talking. I’ll give you a little while. And I’ll be back.”

There’s a small silence after Laura’s footsteps taper away out of earshot. Then there’s the sound of a chair again but it’s scooting back across the floor towards the bed this time. Coming very close. “All right,” Hathaway mutters to himself.

And his voice starts up, directed straight at Robbie. “This is not like Claire Gansa, sir. Did you get that? So you’re able to wake up. You’re just going to take your own time about it, by the sounds of things. And fluctuating awareness? So sometimes you can hear and not respond?” He sounds practically indignant still on Robbie’s behalf. He’s just got no place to put his anger, has he? “Must be like living a nightmare that you can’t wake up from. And then you fall asleep and you wake up in the same nightmare.”

Christ. That’s exactly what it is.

James draws a breath. “But they’ll work it out,” he says, trying to convince himself, too, by the sounds of things. “And I know you can hear me, because if you couldn’t it’d feel different than usual, wouldn’t it? Never mind all these machines. I’d know. Because you’d feel different. It feels like you’re here. And Laura said to just keep talking, so…”

Well, no better man for the job.

And Laura was right. It’s calming James down just talking to Robbie. How she’d know that’d work so well? Maybe she just knew it’d help Robbie. Because James’s agitation always tugs at Robbie from some place deep inside him where Robbie’s sergeant has managed to lodge himself over all their years together. And now that pull has even taken Robbie out of his own helpless thoughts.

Because it sounds like there’s bugger all Robbie can do about any of this.

Better just to view it as like that last half-conscious moment before you wake from a deep sleep. That last moment pulling yourself out of a nightmare when your limbs are still sleep-paralysed so you can't move. Just a very prolonged moment. Because any other implications really don’t bear thinking about. So he focuses on James’s voice instead, on the way it’s starting to slow down from its anxiety-laden, forward-driven pace into something a bit more sure.

And James begins to calm under his self-set mission of convincing Robbie that James knows he’s still there, that he’s trying to picture what it’s like for him.

After a while the words seem to fade and become patchily muffled and senseless. It’s just the sheer familiarity of his tone that comes through to Robbie now. James’s deepening timbres are lulling him. Robbie doesn’t want to leave this time. But there’s no choice. He starts to spiral back down into that reaching darkness of oblivion and he can’t reach out to the warm presence of James that’s right beside him but impossible to grasp.

 

===

 

The next time Robbie finds himself aware of what’s happening, James sounds as if he’s hit his stride. Christ, he’s certainly taking this ‘keep talking’ business seriously, isn’t he?

“…and Laura said that that’s like being in a very controlled medically-induced coma, being under anaesthetic. So I’ve been reading about that. And about behaviourally-unresponsive states of consciousness in general. Which is different than a coma. And then I’ve found this other site with people’s accounts of what it feels like if you’re sedated in ICU.”

 _Course he has._ Robbie feels a wave of pure fondness.

“I mean—seems best to cover all the bases if they’re not quite sure which part of it all applies to you. It all sounds completely disorientating, though.”

Aye, he’s got that right, too. It’s well bloody strange.

“It says here that they’ll be looking for clear evidence of even sporadic awareness. So they’ll keep repeating tests. That’ll be why they keep asking you to do things like blink if you can hear what they’re saying. But it might still be that you’re aware of that question and you just can’t comply. I mean—that’s got to be dead frustrating if you can hear them and can’t blink.”

Isn’t it flaming well just.

“And it says…” His voice trails off. “…it says that over ninety per cent of patients experience panic or anxiety if awake under sedation…” He sounds like he can’t quite handle that thought.

_Course not, lad, not with you here to keep me company now._

“It’s not the most scientific of studies,” James offers after a moment. “Anyway, they mean being awake while under anaesthesia, I think. Which is rare. Actually awake during surgery, but with a muscle relaxant so that you can’t move to show them. Too little anaesthetic. So that’s not you—”

But it was. How can it be both? If they gave him too little then why can’t he wake up now? And Robbie can’t even find any way to let them know that he was awake then. That’d be a clue for them, wouldn’t it? A lead. But suddenly he can hear again those voices echoing in a small room, he can feel again the bizarre sensation of things being discussed and then done to him and that first moment of utter fear realising his complete inability to move a muscle—

“It must feel bloody awful, whatever it is.”

And there’s a soft clunk as James’s own support system of his information-supplying phone must be released onto some wooden surface beside the bed. And then there’s the brush of a thick, soft, ribbed cuff against Robbie’s knuckles as James reaches for him. James’s hand slides under his own. And James’s fingers work their way up between Robbie’s.

He’s wearing one of his hoodies. He must have gone home to change at some point because he’d meant to come straight from work to collect Robbie this evening. Robbie must have missed a fair while the last time he was out of it. And that hoodie means that James must be feeling cold, like Robbie, despite the usually overheated environment of the Radcliffe. There’s a blanket that’s under Robbie’s other, emptier palm, atop the cool sheet that’s over his body, but neither of those covers seem to settle over him like they should.

James’s hand is warm and tangible.

And unlike all the kindly-brisk touches of the medical staff when they go about their various ministrations, this one gentle touch is staying.

 

===

 

Where’s James’s hand gone? And there’s two voices again—What’s up with Laura? Her voice is quickened with frustrated concern. And she’s thoroughly immersed in an argument with someone from the sounds of her too.

“…You knew I didn’t mean for you to be so single-minded about staying with him. To neglect yourself. You’ll make yourself ill. And for God’s sake, of course the nurses told me that you lied about last night—”

“I didn’t _lie_ —” Oh, with someone highly familiar who’s in a right snit now. What’s he been doing to get her riled up? She’s the one who told him to keep talking. Was he up all night long? It’s hard to tell what hour of the day it is here because that light over Robbie seems to be constant at all times.

But the last few times he’d woken, he'd come back to an awareness of James murmuring away, and of electric blues and greens and ambers gently penetrating Robbie’s closed lids at one side of his vision. The side that James sits on. There must be one of those monitors translating the constant background beeps into graphs on a screen. And if those graphs were shining more visibly, then it must have been in the dimness of shadowed edges in this room at night. So now it must be morning and Laura’s back here. Very much here.

“You distinctly gave the impression that you’d left for the night. And then you came straight back, didn’t you? You probably just went home for a shower and a change of clothes—”

“And I went to feed Monty.” Ah, good. “But I did leave. Returning does not eradicate the fact that I did leave. It might have been an omission, but not an untruth. There’s a distinct difference. And even Augustine’s doctrine on the matter has been found largely unworkable, and it’s now generally held that certain equivocations _ex justa causa_ are not untruths.”

Christ almighty. Laura’s going to get him started on the Latin and then she’ll go downstairs to work and leave Robbie as the sole captive audience to be treated to Hathaway’s mutterings while he debates doctrines and points that he should have made with her, in heated fashion with himself. Hearing more on James’s internet-inspired musings about whether or not Robbie’s in a coma would be preferable to that.

But Laura doesn’t seem to be going anywhere. She’s never been one to back down from an argument. “I’d defer to your expertise in the theology of deceit there, sergeant. Except you won’t convince me that you actually told the truth either.”

“I’d defer to your medical expertise, doctor, but I’m not actually a patient.”

“You will be if you carry on like this.”

“I’m not going to get ill just from staying here. It’s a hospital. It’s a perfectly healthy environment. Stands to reason.”

“Yes, that’ll make you immune to illness. And, seeing as I work in the morgue, I must be immortal. Your reasoning abilities seem to have deserted you. And, for your information, the rate of sickness absence among nurses compared to other public sector workers—”

“Probably fades into insignificance compared to police officers,” James assures her loftily. He’ll be googling that as soon as she’s gone. And sharing his findings with Robbie.

“ _No.”_ Laura sounds indignant on behalf of the entire NHS, if her tone is anything to go by. Hard to tell exactly why. “It consistently emerges—”

Robbie’s not sure that either of them has a clue what they’re arguing about now. This place must be getting to them both. Although if James has derailed Laura from making her point, then that’s an achievement and a half. And Robbie starts to drift gently back downwards again, regretfully relinquishing that more sharpened state in the way that he still seems to have little control over. Unluckily.

Because he was starting to quite enjoy that.

 

===

 

They both sound a fair bit calmer the next time he finds himself back with them. They must be feeling better for letting off that bit of steam. And Robbie can’t have been gone too long if Laura’s still here.

James sounds more persuasive than anything else now. “I’ve taken leave. You’re working all day and you’re still up here morning, now and night. It won’t make you ill. Or me.”

Oh. He must mean it’s her lunch break. Robbie’s missed all morning and Laura’s back for another attempt at getting James to take a break. And James must have won the first round in Robbie’s absence. Considering he’s still right here.

“But I have a modicum of self-care along with that, James.” Laura’s quite gentle this time. “It won’t do him any good if you’re beyond exhausted when he wakes up. It’ll be a slow and frustrating recovery for him—he’ll be quite weak at first—and he’ll need you.”

There’s a long and rather odd silence from James.

“You do think he’ll recover? That he’ll wake up still himself?”

“Of course,” Laura asserts. “He’s tough as an old boot and twice as stubborn—”

True enough. Although—are old boots stubborn? But if Laura is resorting to offering that sort of comfort instead of answering in factual medical terms—that’s not the best sign.

Does she not have anything good to offer in terms of Robbie’s prognosis? Or has she come back to find James upset and she’s just drawn to offer solace? Has he been here upset all morning?

It’s so bloody frustrating not being able to see them or stay aware to them when you want to. To get taken by that overriding dark nothingness without fair warning or any say.

And James has been doing all this without really knowing if Robbie can hear him or that he will wake to him? He doubts that and yet he’s sitting here hour after hour talking away and refusing point blank to go—

Laura’s got her work cut out for her. Robbie suddenly knows that there’s no way James will leave for the night. No way he’ll go home. James may not win every skirmish with her, but he’s going to win the war.

 

===

 

“…and Lyn keeps ringing the nurses at the desk for updates. But she texts me too. She’s going mad trying to get back. All flights are grounded due to a hurricane.” Seems dead unfair on her the timing of this. They’d saved hard for that holiday. Visiting Lyn’s friend from her student nursing days over in Florida. And bringing Jack over to meet her kids. Lyn had been dead excited.

“Be better if you could wake up before they get here, really, sir,” James confides. “I was just reading about the difficulties that medical staff face when their own family members are patients.”

Bloody hell. He’s not above a bit of well-researched emotional blackmail, is he? Would Laura just take that phone off him?

“And Mark’s been ringing. Although—at the oddest bloody times…”

Never was any good at working out the time difference, Mark. Robbie tends not to grumble overly much at him when he gets those random calls. Good to hear his voice. Better than waking up to the phone to find that you’re being dragged out to a dead body, after all. Lyn is apparently much less tolerant if he bestows a call upon her and wakes her after a long shift.

All right. So James does need his phone. Maybe Laura can just delete his internet connection. It’s good of him to keep Mark and Lyn informed. Laura would have too, of course, but maybe James feels better being involved. Feels nice that he’s updating them.

 

===

 

Robbie’s missed a bit there again. Maybe longer than a bit. What the actual hell is James reading this time? A list of items that a child can bring in for a hospital stay? Just—why? Earlier, as Robbie had wavered half in, half out of getting back to him, James had been going on about trans-oral robotic surgery at the Radcliffe. As if human dentists weren’t bad enough. He must be working his way through the hospital literature. All those leaflets. Is he that tired that he’s run out of coherent thoughts of his own? He needs to take a break. Where’s Laura to do something about that?

Oh. Or is it night again? James voice does sound quite rough around the edges. And those electric colours from the monitor have become more distinct again, half-discerned movement of odd lines of light penetrating Robbie’s ever-shut eyelids. Sort of soothing in their regularity.

“Your child can bring in a favourite object that functions that as a comforter, even if—even if— well, I don’t see why that should be restricted to children. That’d be ageist, wouldn’t it?”

Robbie agrees. He’s sat through every seminar Innocent has going on avoiding normative assumptions and stereotypes too. May as well get some personal benefit from one of them. And should be interesting to find out what’s suddenly struck Hathaway as a suitable comforter for Robbie. He’s a comfort in himself, isn’t he? His voice. He needs to rest now, but somehow he seems to know that it’s his presence that’s helping. Robbie hopes he does.

Because whenever he feels himself start to spiral downwards again into that dark absence of everything, it’s not with such a dizzying feeling of helplessness any more. He focuses on that voice, as it flows determinedly onward, sometimes faltering as doubt takes James, but then gathering renewed resolve and strength again. And he knows that it’ll still be there, even when Robbie can’t locate it, summoning him back up eventually from that void.

 

===

 

“…the stage was set for high drama in this theatre of oft-thwarted dreams, although an unexpected element turned out to be the real determiner of the action…”

Robbie’s come back to alertness to the unmistakeable snap of a broadsheet as James must have stiffened out a page. It’s easy to picture him slouched back in his chair, perusing the paper by that light above Robbie that must make an island for the two of them in the dark. One-handedly. As his other hand, lying loosely in Robbie’s unresisting palm, tethers Robbie to James through the night. But he’d better not be onto the theatre reviews. Good though it is that he’s giving his eyes a break from his tiny screen. Is it—no, it’s one of those overdramatic match reports by some thwarted-writer sports journalist. Football results. Good.

But James’s voice is hesitating in odd places and then carrying on hastily, leaving gaps in the narrative…he’s trying to modify the match report on the hop as he reads it out. He must not want Robbie to get het up. Which means Newcastle have lost again. Bugger. _Who_ scored a hat trick? Ah, God love him, does he not even know Taylor is the flaming centre back? He’s just landing on random names.

Robbie had tried to get him to the pub to watch a match a few months back after that case with Professor Yelland. And been turned down in favour of a book James was reading. He’d had another go later, rooting out his phone on sudden impulse, by himself in the tumult of a pub without the now-accustomed presence of a slouching sergeant across the table who would have been wryly amused at the behaviour being exhibited around him. All in the name of football.

 _King of sports,_ Robbie had texted as an enticement. _Think you’ll find the idiom is ‘sport of kings’, sir,_ the reply had come back, _In reference to horse-racing. And I’m not going to the bookies with you either. See you bright and early for your dental appointment tomorrow._

You know you’ve done something wrong along the way, house-training your sergeant, when he feels free to be that much of a cheeky sod. And has the gall to casually book you an appointment with his own dentist. Mind, when your sergeant is willing to keep this vigil with you, seemingly without a second thought—well, every other consideration pales into insignificance beside that. Even the fact that he is your sergeant…

Once he gets out of here he’s taking James to a proper match. Maybe he’ll make out that he’s dragging him down the pub to watch one some Sunday, then make sure he’s dressed warm and get him to a football stadium instead. It’s been years since Robbie went. Nothing like it on a cold, clear sunny afternoon in late autumn with the swell of the noise and the anticipation. The two of them away from all of this, out in that outdoor space with the bracing air and a blue dome of sky in lieu of any roof.

It’ll be all the more enjoyable when he can educate James in the subtleties of the beautiful game. It’ll be Robbie’s turn to pontificate, after all. Well bloody overdue. It’s nice to picture it, as James’s hand shifts a little in his. Resettling.

 

===

 

Well, this is entirely the wrong moment to find himself back listening.

“Ah. You’re not going to like this, sir. Really, you’re not. But—there’s a bit here about the veil between the worlds becoming thinner this time of year.” Bugger, he’s gone back online. “It was believed that Samhain was the division point between the lighter and the darker halves, of the year so the eve of Samhain, the night between Halloween and November First was a liminal—a between—time. A space between years when the border between our world and the other world was more flexible and open. Hallowe’en is the day after tomorrow,” he adds, contemplatively.

Ah, lad. Get some rest. Laura’ll be sending you into the spirit realm if she catches you up all night a second time.

“No—it’ll be tomorrow night, actually. It’s past two in the morning now so it’s October the thirtieth already.”

Well, sleep deprivation may explain how this idea got into James’s ever-seeking mind. Hallowe’en? What’s Hallowe’en got to do with the price of tea in China? He’d bet James isn’t about to consult Laura on _this_ latest theory he’s forming. Pity. This one might be enough to finally make her do something about the connection between James, his ruddy internet on that phone and—the spirit world now, apparently. He’s grasping at straws, trying to hit on the right theory that’ll solve this. Like he’s working a case.

And, Christ, he’s got a captive audience for this discourse. Robbie can’t even give him The Look.

“Load of rubbish, that’s what you’d say. D’you want to wake up and tell me that that’s a load of rubbish? Want to use your eyebrows to let me know I’m on thin sodding ice?”

Yes, Robbie does. His features should fall automatically fall into that expression that he’s felt on his face so many times over the years, directed at his sergeant when he’s coming out with all sorts. It should be an uncontrollable reflex, that look that—well, doesn’t actually much deter James, come to think of it. It usually makes him barely trouble himself to suppress a smirk. But he’s surpassing himself this time.

James needs to get a decent kip, a decent meal and a pint down the pub into him in that order, if this is what he’s coming up with now. Or maybe what he needs is another dose of Laura’s sharp-warm care to set him straight.

Although what the hell is that feeling of being in an absence of anything that Robbie gets when he spirals downwards? It’s more like blacking out than falling asleep, and still not that. He only knows that he’s colder after he falls deeper away from consciousness, because he starts to feel himself warming up a bit whenever he finds himself back with James.

And even for someone who seems—well, almost like he’s trying to find his way in to whatever state Robbie is in in order to find Robbie a way out of it—James has hit uncomfortably close to describing something that resonates with Robbie with that in-between malarkey.

“Probably nothing to do with it, I’m sure,” James assures him hastily now.

 _You’d better believe it, sergeant._ Christ, you know things have come to a pretty pass when you can’t even force yourself awake purely to disprove _this_ one.

 

===

 

It’s like becoming aware just at a shift change. Robbie’s begun to be able to tell when it’s around the time that the nurses in the unit change over because the amount of different voices rising and falling, at what must be a nurses’ station out in the corridor, seems to increase. Handovers. And then the next time someone comes in to tend to him it’ll be a different voice than the last time. The nurses are good at narrating to you what they’re doing.

But this is Robbie’s own personal change of shift. Must be proper morning if Laura’s back. Is she relieving Robbie’s protector-in-chief after his long night? Or is James returning after a break? Who’s coming and who’s going? There’s a murmur of two voices further back from the bed and then two sets of footsteps going their separate ways, one retreating and one approaching and the sound of a chair being pulled closer—

“Laura says I’m to stop googling.” James announces. Oh, thank God. Maybe he’s given her an inkling of the sort of rubbish he was reading. “And she’s put me onto some proper peer-reviewed open-access journals which cover disorders of states of consciousness instead.”

Bloody hell. Spoke too soon. She’s done what? What’s Laura think she’s at?

“Listen to this.”

Like Robbie has a choice.

“They’ve developed this new ‘fingerprint of consciousness’ test…”

Only James would go and find articles about people in comas—and then read the ruddy article to the person in the flaming coma.

“It helps identify patients who are covertly aware despite being behaviourally unresponsive. Uncommunicative. Does sound like you, sir.”

It’s not the first time someone’s accused Robbie of being uncommunicative. This time he’s just not in a position to deny it. Or tell Hathaway that he’s one to talk. Although you couldn’t accuse James of that at the moment. He’s not just talking on like this, enlightening Robbie about a vast array of topics, he’s actually—with his touch and his murmurs and his sheer constancy here—he’s communicating something to Robbie that’s becoming increasingly hard to deny.

“Still think all this must feel awful to you,” he mutters now. “I do remember the feeling, you know.”

What?

“Just before I really went under, she told me, Zoe, what she was doing. I could hear her and I couldn’t move.”

Jesus Christ. He’d always just assumed that James had lost consciousness, had lost any ability to comprehend what was happening before Zoe Kenneth had started to set the fire. He’d thought James had known very little from when he must have lost awareness on that bed until that moment when Robbie had managed to get him out and the force of the first explosion had thrown them both down.

“I still remember it.”

So does Robbie. The urgency of being unable to rouse James and not knowing why. The dead weight of him over Robbie’s shoulder and the sheer impossible effort of getting him out when you couldn’t trust him to one of the uniforms, couldn’t let them take him. You had to keep hold of him yourself and keep him somehow in that hold even outside. Even when he tried to escape your grasp and fought you to go back towards that deathtrap.

“I remember what you did.”

He starts to rub the heel of his hand up and down Robbie’s bare arm, below the short sleeves of the hospital gown. Then his spread palm drops down and his whole hand grips Robbie briefly and resumes the soothing repetition. It’s bringing to mind a vivid image of those long, supple fingers that have handed Robbie all sorts of things over the years. Evidence bags appearing as Robbie hones in on some small detail out of place, unexpected coffee mugs as he mutters at his computer screen and efficiently filled-in paperwork offered for his perusal. That silent solidarity at crime scenes, the daily gestures that give Robbie that small lift, and those completed tasks, many unasked for, that ease his burden.

And now Robbie can feel the tension slowly seeping out of that hand, the fingers starting to relax and flatten more on their rhythmic travels up and down his forearm, as James finds comfort in the movement too.


	2. Chapter 2

It turns out it’s just so easy. If you yield to it enough and fall deep enough into that oblivion, there’s something on the other side.

And even as you get more distance from the ordinary world than you’ve ever had before, everything in it does that become much clearer at the end. There are all these noises that are gone so piercingly, head-thuddingly sharp and these clinically urgent discussions that no longer matter now.

Someone should tell those people that those discussions don’t matter.

You can leave all of that behind and this godawful feeling of utter helplessness that every fibre of Robbie’s being wants to turn away from. Even if he can’t rise enough to the surface to wake, there’s another way out of this odd limbo that has had such a grasp on him. Stilling his limbs, silencing his voice, weighing his eyes shut. He can leave by a back door. Just let himself be drawn right over the threshold and further away as the noises become more muted and all the unwelcome intrusions on his unresponsive body start to fade—

“Don’t you fucking _dare,_ ” says a voice low in his ear.

_Oh, bugger._

 

===

 

It’s all gone calmer the next time Robbie finds himself tuned back in to the ongoing radio transmission that is James. And he can tell that it is just James again, there’s no feel of anyone else around his bed. The beeps and clicks have returned to their normal rhythm and volume. There’s that hum which is the floor-polishing machine. James has identified that sound for Robbie before. Must be late in the evening if that’s out in the corridor. And the nurses must be back at their station out there, too, because the muted flow of their voices is a distant sound, like a television in the next room.

And James is talking intently, just to Robbie, telling him what’s been happening.

“…so I wasn’t allowed back in to you for a while. I had to get Laura. They didn’t like it very much that I failed to leave immediately when they were resuscitating you.”

Is that what they think they were at? Feels like a ruddy elephant’s been stomping on Robbie’s chest.

“When I say they didn’t like it very much—they didn’t like it all. But someone needed to have a word with you. Although kindly don’t do that again. Laura had to have a word with _them_ to get them to let me back in. She stayed a long time with us when she came back this evening, after you did that. Until she got called back into work."

Ah, no, she’ll be exhausted then, too.

“She said she was just keeping an eye on me. That I don’t use up two decades of professional goodwill that she’s built up in the Radcliffe in one fell swoop.”

Why, what else has he been up to?

“But I think she was keeping an eye on you. And they’re still saying they’ll call security to evict me if I pull another stunt like that. Pull a stunt,” he mutters to himself, offended. “I was only having a word. I couldn’t leave you to—”

And it all goes silent but for James’s voice, punctuated by the firm, steady unceasing sounds of Robbie’s internal rhythms translated into electronic code. It’s James who is becoming uneven. “Robbie. Come on. Please. Come on. I need you to—I can’t—”

Oh, God. If the lad goes and breaks Robbie’s heart that won’t help him rouse out of this. It’ll just send all of these machines haywire. It seems impossible that James can’t feel the reassuring pressure that Robbie’s heart and mind are sending back as James’s fingers grip his so hard. Almost hard enough for both of them. Almost. But Robbie’s whole will isn’t enough, he can’t seem to make any response that James can feel or hear or see.

“I won’t be going too far again,” comes James’s voice eventually, although his grip doesn’t ease one iota. “Not unless Laura’s here. In case someone needs to have another word.”

And he’s quiet for a little while until his hand suddenly tugs itself free of Robbie’s.

“Hold on. Speaking of favours that I had Laura persuade them into...” And there’s a welcome heaviness settling right over Robbie’s torso and legs, grounding him to the bed. And James’s hands are carefully lifting Robbie’s, one at a time. Then there’s the feel of James’s hands right on top of that new all-encompassing weight, adjusting and smoothing. “See. You’ll be warmer with this than a dozen of those light ones.”

The feel of it under Robbie’s still palms is so familiar. Wool worn soft. It’s Val’s blanket. She’d been a knitter. Right through one winter Robbie had come home so many nights after working late and found her working on it in the bright circle of her reading lamp in front of the television. Waiting up for him. She didn’t get too much time to work on it during the day. He’d teased her that by the time she’d finished it’d be too warm for it, and it was. But it had covered their bed the following winter and for years after. It had been something of theirs that Robbie had returned to using with relief after his time in more tropical climes. He still pulls it out as soon the year starts to properly turn.

“It’s a bit big for this narrow bed. But I knew that with a bit of tucking…I saw it neatly folded on your bed the first day of this, yesterday evening, when I went to feed Monty. It looked dead cosy. Laura’s taken over looking after him now, by the way. So I asked her to bring this.”

 

===

 

It’s strange the way that you wake to different tones and moods from him and you don’t know at first what’s prompted the change. When Robbie had drowsed off peacefully under that blanket, properly warm to the bones of him for the first time since this started, James’s voice had been falling into gentle undulations. Now Robbie seems to have returned to him at his most staccato defensive.

“I’m fine. I _am_ taking care of myself. I slept fine.” It’s morning again? All the more recent memories are hazy sleep-befuddled ones. But they’re also of James’s hand holding his and of his voice murmuring halfheard things. Does he doze and somehow wake enough to mumble things at Robbie whenever Robbie rouses briefly to awareness? How’s he know to do that if Robbie can’t move to alert him in any way?

“You don’t look like you slept,” Laura says flatly. Oh, it’s another round of the Hathaway-Hobson debate. Laura, God help her, not knowing what Robbie now knows deep within, about the impossibility of James leaving him, must be back and mounting another assault on her campaign to preserve James’s health and sanity.

James carries on straight past that. “And I go home for a bit when you’re here.”

“You’re straight back here with your hair still damp from your shower.”

“And I leave him to eat when you’re here too. It’s not _my_ fault that they won’t even let you drink a coffee in here—”

That appears to be a distinct source of bitterness. Robbie can only imagine.

“And yet they do in the canteen. Funnily enough. They’ll even let you eat there.”

“—and I go out for fresh air.”

“You go out for the length of a smoke break. And I wouldn’t call that eating. I’ve seen birds in my garden make a better meal than that. Something wrong with my cooking, sergeant?” _Oh, she’s keeping him fed properly? Ah, Laura._ “And I don’t mean you’ll get ill, I mean if you don’t go home and take a proper break, if you try to spend one more night in here, you’ll be strongly advised to know that my keycode gives me full access to ICU and I’ll come in here in the dead of night with the sharpest bone saw I use—”

“Oh, that’s just—”

“ _Or,_ ” says Laura, considering. And she pauses. James has the sense to stay silent. Robbie can almost feel his sudden trepidation as the hand in his stiffens.

But that means he hasn’t let go this time when Laura arrived. He generally does when someone comes in—and with the constant comings and goings in this place, Robbie’s hand is gently relinquished and then firmly retaken umpteen times a day. There’s a feeling of soft wool against his knuckles now. James’s clasp must be lying part-hidden in the safety of the folds of the blanket.

“Autumn is a great time of year for spiders,” Laura muses.

“Great is _not_ the word I’d use—I’d—why are you telling me that?”

“You find quite big ones in the garden this time of year. There was a fantastically intricate web from the fence to the log pile this morning in the dew. Imagine how it’d feel if one of them was dropped on you unawares while you slept—”

There’s a resounding silence. The grasp on Robbie’s hand tightens reflexively. Robbie wishes he could stroke those knuckles with his thumb. _S’all right,_ he’d say, _she won’t. Think about it, lad, course Laura wouldn’t._ Although James’s ability to reason does seem to desert him when it comes to spiders.

“—on a makeshift folding visitor-bed that’s obviously too short for you and it’s _killing_ your back, James.”

Ah, can’t have that.

“I sleep in the chair. Although now that you raise the topic, I do think something needs to be done about these furnishings.”

“You’re vastly overestimating the extent of my remit in this hospital, Hathaway.”

“I don’t know—the nurses have stopped trying to get me to leave. At all. Despite yesterday. All of them.” There’s a question in his tone.

Well, that's Laura, isn’t it? She’ll do her everything in her power to persuade James to go and get some proper rest when she knows he’s past his limit. But she’ll equally make sure that no-one forces him to leave before he’s ready. And if he’s not ready—then it dawns on Robbie that he’s not going to be able to leave either. He’ll have to somehow find it within himself to fight his way up through this harder. He knows it with a surety that’s deeper than the aches in his unmoving muscles. He can’t leave James if he won’t let Robbie go.

So as he drifts back down again to the sound of James asking Laura questions from some of this research he’s read, he focuses on staying safely held in the clasp of that hand.

 

===

 

“If his scans show that he’s neurologically sound, then why are you testing for something that’s below the level of conscious control?” What’s James’s voice doing over there? And why’s he getting so angry? That’s not the kind of tone he’d use when arguing with Laura. He’s in a proper fury.

“What?” And who’s that new male voice? On James’s side of the bed?

There’s a protective hand on Robbie’s arm now from the other side of him. “That’s what you’re checking for, isn’t it? With the reflex hammer. You want to see if his foot will move. It’s a deep tendon reflex. And there’s no need to check for such a _basic_ one.”

“There was a consultation this morning about your friend and you’ll find there’ll be a few of us in today carrying out assessments. And I appreciate your need to try and keep yourself informed as a manner of reassurance, but you don’t have the overall knowledge base to interpret the bits of research that you’re dipping into piecemeal.”

Who the hell is this standing right over Robbie? Some new doctor? Most of the staff in here talk to James in a kind-enough practical-sympathetic fashion. They sound like Robbie imagines his Lyn must sound when she’s in nurse mode. They seem to reassure James. This one’s manner is going to go down like a lead balloon.

And is that why Laura’s been keeping James in reading material—or guiding him to the better stuff? She’s been giving him an outlet? A focus for his fretting?

At some stage, there’d been something read to Robbie about heightened senses compensating for a lack of sensory input through the usual channels. _You can tell me if that’s true when you wake up,_ James had said, interested. Well, there must be something to that, because Robbie could swear he can feel actual waves of silent hostility radiating off his sergeant now.

The unknown doctor seems oblivious to what has to be a death-stare from James. Must be worryingly unobservant for a doctor. “You’d be far better off turning your energies to accepting that the outcome for him carries uncertainty and that no amount of poorly-understood material will affect that, unfortunately.”

There’s a silence that stretches onwards. Then—

“C’mon, then, sir,” urges a low voice in Robbie’s ear. “Kick him.”

It seems impossible that Robbie’s laughter is purely internal when he can feel his foot jerk in response to the hammer touch.

 

===

 

That’s not the arrogant voice of the doctor from earlier. There’s someone else right beside Robbie and this voice—it’s the same voice from back at the start of this, in that small echoing room, that had been asking questions and was followed by all sorts of awful sensations of being manipulated and hearing what they’d do next, but no-one talking to you and no way to protest against it. It’s a voice that Robbie’s heard a few times since but never quite so close beside him, never while he’s been so acutely aware of the overwhelming need to just move away—

Then footsteps recede away from him and there’s a gentle touch to Robbie’s shoulder. “It’s James, it’s James…” that comforting voice soothes. “He doesn’t like that doctor,” he confides to someone else. “Every time he goes anywhere near him—What’s wrong?” he says in a very different tone.

“Nothing,” says Laura’s voice after a moment.

“What’s happened? Is it his stats, are they worse?”

“No. He’s fine.” But she’s having difficulty talking. Robbie wants to push himself more upright and reach out to her. What’s the matter with her?

“The last time you said that. It just touched off—”

All he’d said was _It’s James._ He must say that all the time when he calls her on the phone looking for information for Robbie. Multiple times a day when they’re in the throes of a case and needing whatever she can give them thick and fast. He must start most of his calls to her with that exact phrase.

“—the way you said it.”

“ _Oh_.” And there’s that sound of a chair scooting over the floor that Robbie’s now heard so many times. Usually as James returns to him after he’s allowed a nurse access to Robbie for their ministrations.“That’s all right,” says James’s voice, awkwardly. And then there’s the kind of soft-friction rhythmic sound it makes when he rubs Robbie’s arm.

Robbie gets a sudden mental image of James, his chair pulled close to Laura’s and one long arm around her neat frame, rubbing his free hand up and down her arm.

“Bad time of year,” he offers after a bit. Ah. To do with that, is it? “You could stay here tonight. If you like.”

“Would you go home, then?”

“No.”

Worth a try, Laura.

“It’s okay. Franco’s coming back late tonight, anyway.”

“Doesn’t he know that you wouldn’t much like being on your own this time of year?” James is trying, quite unsuccessfully, to suppress the indignation from his voice.

“He does, of course. His mother was quite ill, that’s why he was in Germany. They got a scare. She’s out of the woods now and he’s coming back.”

“Oh.” And that one little syllable tells Robbie that James is reassured of Franco’s credentials as a decent bloke. Robbie already is. He’d made it his business to be. And he should’ve remembered what this time of year would be like for Laura himself. Her friend being murdered on Hallowe’en night and kicking her whole nightmare off. Although there’s sod all he can do for her when he literally can’t lift a finger.

But James has it under control. There’s quiet between all three of them for a while, apart from that consoling noise of James’s touch. Robbie can nearly feel Laura coming back to normal under the awkward comfort of it.

“What did you mean, he doesn’t like that doctor?” she asks eventually, her voice carefully composed.

The sound of James’s hand stops. “Every time he hears his voice, he gets agitated. His heart rate on that monitor speeds up just a little.”

“It does? Dr Abbott? But he’s the one who—that means—”

 _Don’t._ The vehemence of the thought takes Robbie by surprise. _Don’t tell him I was awake in surgery._ He thinks of the way that James’s voice had faltered when he’d reached that part about people feeling panicked, and he knows that James won’t be able to handle that.

“It means what?”

“That I think you’re right, James. He’s more aware than we thought. Distinguishing between one voice and another. And forming instant strong likes and dislikes. You know the way he does. Rather irrationally…”

What she’s mean— _irrationally?_

“Yes, I think so.” James is plainly delighted. That’s even made him smile. You can hear it in his voice. And it’s dead easy to picture the way his face falls into that familiar grin.

Good save, Laura.

“You can go and get some of that fresh air of yours now, James. Go on. I’m fine. And I’d consider it a personal favour if you’d eat something while you’re at it.”

There’s a silence from James in response. And then—

“Can you…Would you mind holding his hand now? I think it helps him—it helps him to know that someone’s here, that one of us is here.”

“Of course.” And just like that, he’s told Laura. That he sits here clasping Robbie’s hand. And she appears to be taking that completely in her stride. Huh.

As the sound of James’s footsteps fades away, his stride is more purposeful than usual this time. Is he in in dire need of a nicotine and caffeine fix? Or feeling renewed optimism from what Laura just said? Or maybe—maybe he’s relieved to have managed the admission that she’s somehow enabled him to make.

Generally Robbie can drift along fairly easily if he’s here when Laura takes over from James. She talks away, which is just dead nice, and there’s none of that confusing conflict.

Because James himself makes an increasingly urgent pull of concern tug at Robbie’s centre, even while his ongoing presence and his voice are pure reassurance to Robbie and a different level of comfort altogether. He seems to know how to detect, and respond to, the odd surges of panic that overtake Robbie. Like with this Dr Abbott. He’d known from the heart monitor. 

Robbie knows the stimulation of the assessments could raise his heart rate in itself. Or so he'd been informed by one of James’s articles. But James is here so constantly that he’d noticed something different about the way that Robbie had automatically responded to tests done when this doctor was supervising as opposed to any other. Clever sod that he is. Feels like James almost is Robbie’s heart monitor at this stage of the game.

Laura doesn’t have that urgent need of Robbie that pulls him towards the surface of his thoughts even despite himself. She generally just lets him—

“Robbie.” And her voice is low and urgent as a smaller hand slips into his. Oh, she wants a word. “Look, if you were awake in surgery—I’m sorry, that’s awful. It shouldn’t have happened and I’m not about to let James loose researching what that would have been like. He’s beyond worn out—but if you're aware enough now to recognise Nick Abbott just from that then that’s _good._ They paged him back then for a neuro consult when they couldn’t rouse you. I’ll tell your own neuro consultant now, it’ll help them to know.”

And she falls silent. Then, when she starts again, her tone has changed. “Why _won’t_ you come out of this? If you were able to hear then, then you’re able to hear more than I really thought you could now. Robbie. Come on, now. James can’t take much more of this. He’s barely hanging on.”

She sounds like she can’t take much more either. He doesn’t want her upsetting herself any further when James has just calmed her. But there’s nothing he can do. It’s as well James will be back to her soon enough.

Both Laura and James seem to have moved beyond their normal ways of coping now. They’ve even stopped that arguing that had energised both of them a bit. That had given them an outlet. They seem to have finally reached the same place where they’re both just taking an exhausted comfort from each other.

 

===

 

“…It’s the middle of the night. Hallowe’en night. And it’s dead quiet really, for a hospital—”

Oh, he’s managed to stay for the night yet again. Robbie is oddly touched that even the threat of that spider still hasn’t done it.

“They all use their night shift voices—”

Is this James’s night shift voice? It’s a tad deeper even than usual. Softer. Sort of peaceful. It makes Robbie wish that James would just go the whole hog now and climb up and stretch out beside Robbie. Murmur away to Robbie beside him on this pillow. It makes you want to stroke his head gently until he drops off himself. Lend him a bit of peace, if you can. He needs that. There’s something in his voice underneath it all, something that’s not too good, despite all that he’s trying to channel into his words for Robbie.

James should have someone to comfort him. He’s bent his whole being and purpose to being with Robbie right through this and someone should be comforting him now. It should be Robbie.

“You always think of hospitals as busy places, don’t you? But the unit that you’re in goes so quiet that there’s almost an absence of sound—”

Well, amends Robbie, quiet but for the sound of one voice.

“And if no-one can hear me, am I really talking?”

Is he hallucinating?

“I mean—tree falling in the forest and all that.” Robbie appears to be privy to some Hathawayish stream of consciousness now. This should be interesting.

But there’s a brief moment of silence, and then—“You can still hear me though, can’t you? On some level. You always hear me in the end, even when I’m not saying much.”

 _Oh_. Robbie struggles, hard, to make his fingers press back into that unyielding grip. As hard now as he first had in that operating theatre. Maybe even more so. But no longer driven by agitated panic, but by a pure need to get to James.

He wants to pull James’s worried hot head down onto his own shoulder and offer him that. And slowly bring his agitation into rest. Then draw him down onto Robbie’s chest, draw him into silence and let him sleep.

James’s hand is unfurling from Robbie’s now. Is he upset, is he leaving? But the clasp simply readjusts itself more firmly.

“I know you can hear me. I’ve still got you. And I’m still not going anywhere.” And he starts to talk on again resolutely about his research. “The cerebral cortex stays continuously active even in the absence of any external stimulus. So that means—” But his voice is wavering around the edges like he’s the one who’s fading now.

And something deep within Robbie must finally yield in response, and let him struggle up to reach at last for James in all of his weariness and distress, because—

“Hathaway—” Robbie hears in his own voice. Or something like Robbie’s voice. The word comes out in a dry, rasped jumble.

James’s voice stops.

“James,” Robbie tries instead and somehow that’s easier. He swallows.

“…Sir?”

“Shut. Up.” He manages that more successfully.

“Sir?” comes James’s voice again in utter disbelief.

Then that hand is pulling away from Robbie’s, and that feels wrong now. Robbie’s eyes slowly blink open. His head turns reluctantly to let him see James on his feet right by the bed. James, his eyes on Robbie, is groping a hand towards the call buzzer. Robbie’s focus drifts up to James’s waiting, dazed gaze. Robbie fumbles his fingers at his blanket, aiming them after James’s hand. That warm hand. It’s Robbie’s to hold now, after all. He knows that.

And James abandons his blind attempts at locating the buzzer and drops down on the edge of the bed. His eyes, a burning blue declaration set in the pallor of his exhausted face, are seeking Robbie’s eyes silently. The sheer intensity of that gaze is forcing Robbie’s own lids to stay open now, despite the heaviness of each blink.

And Robbie finds that he can get his hand to follow, in a delayed fashion, after his wish, and gets it up onto James’s forearm, achieving a tug at it. To get James even closer. Just for a few moments. Before James summons the medical staff and Robbie will lose hold of him for a little bit.

James’s eyes widen further at the touch. “That weakness you’re feeling,” he starts. But he’s having trouble drawing breath to say it. “That’s a common problem after a prolonged period of immobilisation. The causes of it aren’t clearly established—”

But his whole expression reaches to Robbie above the prosaic information he’s still valiantly delivering. It’s one of sheer wonder. He looks like he’s falling apart.

Robbie raises his other hand to place one finger on James’s lips. And James comes to a silent halt.

 _Better. That’s better, lad,_ Robbie would say if he could only get the words out yet.

But it’s possible to work his hand around to the back of the James’s neck and press him down towards him that last bit. James comes right in close, tilting his head in readiness to listen to him.

When Robbie’s lips instead find James’s warm, unresisting mouth in one firm press, James’s tired eyes drift shut. When Robbie releases him, he just drops his head right down onto Robbie’s shoulder. In complete silence. It’s a blessed relief to just hold him into quietude at last. To get your arm around him and hold him there into stillness and into rest.

Because he’s speechless, Robbie takes in, in warm contentment. Utterly ruddy speechless.

**Author's Note:**

> This fic had 3 chapters when it was first posted here but I could never quite get on with the third chapter. I could neither stop it from changing the feel I was aiming for in the story nor make it fit! And I very much wanted the ending of this fic to be this ending instead of there being more. So I've removed the third chapter from here and am letting these two chapters stand alone. Should anyone reading this like to read a kind of epilogue (the morning after in the hospital and a scene set 2 weeks later) chapter 3 is still sitting quietly on my own LJ and this is the link: http://divingforstones.livejournal.com/11806.html
> 
> And thank you to anyone who so kindly left comments on the third chapter. Unluckily there was no way to stop them being deleted when I removed the chapter but I still have them and value them and those helpful comments were really appreciated, as always.


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